Output vs visualizer

[zwiller]

Pushing the envelope this year with some fast timings/interval spacings and starting to notice the visualizer is not keeping up.  Anyone know if actual output will be affected?  I am using conductor and it is hardcoded to 50m/sec so I have LSP setup the same.  That gives me the ability to use 20 intervals per second right?  I am nowhere this limit and it is just not working in the visualizer... 

THANKS

[keitha43]

The visualizer is not as accurate as just watching the controllers on the left of the grid change color. The output is usually fine. If you are worried hook up your lights and play it back manually via the new scheduler as it is the best playback engine until the sequencer get the overhaul in 2014. Or better yet the conductor itself.

[zwiller]

That's encouraging.  You know what's else is weird, the visualizer does not respond well even if I slow the sequence down...  That's seems odd.  Granted we are talking some pretty minute stuff.  Hopefully it won't be long to see it for myself and get my show going. 

[arw01]

As Keith said, the little window on the left is much more accurate according to the videos they post on LSP.  They undock it, enlarge it, and then control click the image to make it a bit larger instead of using the shared one.

Alan

[keitha43]

Actually I meant where the controller and channel names are on the left of the grid . I do use the small window undocked and enlarged a little bit.

Sent from my Thunderbolt using Tapatalk 2.

[fyb2000]

Sam,
when playing back in the .virtualizer., it should tell you what the frame rate is at (bottom of the LSP window). If you are setup at 50ms, and the frame rate is anything below 20 FPS, it will not display your effects correctly. I have seen the FPS going below 10FPS, well below it at time. When sequencing, my office window looks at the front yard, so I usually switch my conductor with a spare etherdongle I have, and look at the result on my setup. Not ideal by far (usually sequencing during daylight, partial view of the whole setup...) but still got better results. For more minutes effects, I usually have the part I want to checkout set on a loop, put my wireless headphones on and run in the front yard to check it up close and personal. Got to go fast, the looping doesn't last forever, it will stop by itself randomly after a little while.

[zwiller]

Thanks.  Seeing that you understand more than I do about this, can you expound on 20FPS and maximum number of intervals?  Does 20FPS = 50ms, so I can expect to output effects of 20 intervals in a second?  Not looking to get crazy with it, just trying to understand the limits. 

Do you have same result when slowing sequence down?  If so this is a bug then...  Very similar to shimmer.  I am going out on a limb and using shimmer alot since I learned it worked with the conductor even though it doesn't in the visualizer. 

[arw01]

Might want to test shimmer out in the yard, I haven't really been impressed with it. I have not played with the configuation for shimmer and twinkle, yet.

Alan

[zwiller]

Shimmer rocks but you need the conductor to use it.  By happy mistake, I happened to have an element hooked up for the SSCv4 beta and shimmer was sent to it and I was blown away.  Convulsive...   

[fyb2000]

20FPS = 20 frames per second. At that rate, each frame is displayed for 1/20 of a second, or 50ms.
If, when playing back, the FPS that is displayed is less than 20 frames per second, and you intend to play them back using the conductor, then some of the effects on the PC monitor will not show correctly. Say it's telling you the playback on the virtualizer is 7FPS, that means the screen is refreshed every 1/7 of a second, or every 142ms (and change). Too slow for catching all your effects.
The conductor is outputting at a set rate, no matter what, all nodes will receive a command 20 times per second, every 50ms.
When, and if your sequencing ask for effects that are changing faster than every 50ms (say by computing a transition or a macro, and having the settings set so as the intervals generated are smaller than 50ms), it's a grey area as to what will be used on the conductor. Could be a blend of all the colors during that 50ms 'conductor interval', could be last one in that interval, could be first one…
As far as shimmer is concerned and it's result with the conductor, I cannot tell you if it works 100% great as I am not using it. But I am using twinkle, which is similar and I have seen some issues when exported to the conductor. It does work with some colors but not with others. Well I am not 100% sure that it has anything to do with color per say, but I have a 20 seconds section on one of my sequence where one of the element goes through 10 different colors, blending from one to the other, using the twinkle effect. When played using the LSP scheduler, it works. When played using the conductor, just a few of the colors (sections) are actually twinkling. The ones not twinkling are just being displayed as if I had used the ON effect.

[zwiller]

Paid attention to FPS and it hovers around 19-25 on the particular sequence I am pushing the limits on.  It is interesting that FPS did not change when I was doing some really fast/close interval stuff or macros generated at 15FPS.  Am I wrong to assume that if I create something with less than 20 intervals per second it should output correctly even though it does not display?  I suspect FPS has nothing to do with intervals...  Also, what are the lines displayed in the waverform?  Something related to frame rate? 

The default for the macro transtions (colorslider) is 15FPS and the effects render pretty good.  It will be interesting to to see what happens with the conductor since I am using tons of these compared to last year...  As well as shimmer.  I am doing shimmer fades to black and color change shimmers too. 

[fyb2000]

The 'big' virtualizer is somewhat useless, at least most of the time. Your best bet, if you want to see a more accurate preview of your show, is to only use the smaller virtualizer. Detach the window, and make it bigger for when you want to preview. You can zoom in and out in there by left and right clicking (don't remember if you have to use CTRL at the same time as you are left and right clicking, not in front of LSP at the moment). The refresh rate is a lot better in there, and it is usually way more accurate. You'll have to experiment to find out how big you can get that 'floating' window up before effects start to be skipped. Drawback of that method, is that the floating window always stays in front, so you have to turn it on/off for when you want to preview vs when you want to sequence.
You are correct to assume that regardless of how it is previewed in LSP, the output to the conductor will be correct. The format of the conductor is static. 20 events per seconds, on each channel. No matter what.
If you wanted to get a visual idea of when and how those events would 'fire' with the conductor, try to create a new sequence in LSP, with an existing music track, and select to create custom intervals. The value you want to use for the custom intervals is 0.05.
If you do that, the grid that you will see will be the same that the conductor will use. Each cell in the LSP grid will correspond to the same cell in the conductor. Events in LSP that use smaller intervals that those cells will not render correctly with the conductor. Events starting in the middle of a cell in LSP will (most likely) start with the next interval in the conductor.
And yes, FPS has nothing to do with intervals. It is just the refresh rate that your computer is rendering your show at while previewing. It will not affect the final result in any way, form or shape. Just that if it is slower than the rate you are firing events at, it will skip some events.

[zwiller]

Thank you some much for taking the time to post that.  Helps alot.  Sounds like the vizualizer is a more well known issue than I thought.